黑料吃瓜资源

鈥淭丑别 brain is an exquisite sensor of what鈥檚 going on in your body,鈥� says 黑料吃瓜资源 Assistant Professor Jeremy Borniger. 鈥淏ut it requires balance. Neurons need to be active or inactive at the right times. If that rhythm goes out of sync even a little bit, it can change the function of the entire brain.鈥�

In mice, the Borniger lab has found that breast cancer disrupts the diurnal, or day-night, rhythms of corticosterone levels. Corticosterone is the primary stress hormone in rodents. In humans, it鈥檚 cortisol. Typically, levels rise and fall naturally throughout the day. In breast cancer, the team found that tumors flatten corticosterone release, reducing quality of life and increasing mortality.

Disruptions to our own diurnal rhythms have been linked to stress responses like insomnia and anxiety鈥攂oth common among cancer patients. The body depends on a feedback loop called the HPA axis to maintain healthy stress hormone levels. The hypothalamus (H), pituitary gland (P), and adrenal glands (A) work together to ensure regular day-night rhythms. Borniger was surprised to find that in mice, breast cancer can disrupt those rhythms before tumors take hold:

鈥淓ven before the tumors were palpable, we see about a 40 or 50% blunting of this corticosterone rhythm. We could see that happening within three days of inducing the cancer, which was very interesting.鈥�

When the team looked at the hypothalamus, they saw that key neurons were locked into a hyperactive, yet low-output state. Once the team stimulated these neurons to mimic the mouse鈥檚 normal day-night cycle, regular stress hormone rhythms restarted. The adjustment pushed anti-cancer immune cells into breast tumors, causing them to shrink significantly. Borniger explains:

鈥淓nforcing this rhythm at the right time of day increased the immune system’s ability to kill the cancer鈥攚hich is very strange, and we鈥檙e still trying to figure out exactly how that works. The interesting thing is if we do the same stimulation at the wrong time of day, it no longer has this effect. So, you really need to have this rhythm at the right time to have this anti-cancer effect.鈥�

The team is now investigating exactly how tumors disrupt the body鈥檚 healthy rhythms. Borniger hopes their work may one day help bolster existing therapies.

鈥淲hat鈥檚 really cool is that we didn’t treat the mice with anti-cancer drugs,鈥� he says. 鈥淲e鈥檙e focused on making sure the patient is physiologically as healthy as possible. That itself fights the cancer. This might one day help boost the effectiveness of existing treatment strategies and significantly reduce the toxicity of many of these therapies.鈥�

Written by: Nick Wurm, Communications Specialist | [email protected] | 516-367-5940

Funding

National Institutes of Health, National Cancer Institute, AACR Breast Cancer Research Foundation, Department of Defense, National Institute of Aging, Brain & Behavior Research Foundation, Howard Hughes Medical Institute, Rita Allen Foundation, McKnight Foundation, Simons Foundation, Klingenstein Fund

Citation

Gomez, A., et al., 鈥淎berrant hypothalamic neuronal activity blunts glucocorticoid diurnal rhythms in murine breast cancer鈥�, Neuron, December 15, 2025. DOI:

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